cidedly flattering painter,
and that he imparted to his models a romantic grace which seemed easily
and cheaply acquired by the payment of a hundred dollars to a young man
who made "sitting" so entertaining. For Felix was paid for his pictures,
making, as he did, no secret of the fact that in guiding his steps to
the Western world affectionate curiosity had gone hand in hand with a
desire to better his condition. He took his uncle's portrait quite as if
Mr. Wentworth had never averted himself from the experiment; and as he
compassed his end only by the exercise of gentle violence, it is but
fair to add that he allowed the old man to give him nothing but his
time. He passed his arm into Mr. Wentworth's one summer morning--very
few arms indeed had ever passed into Mr. Wentworth's--and led him across
the garden and along the road into the studio which he had extemporized
in the little house among the apple-trees. The grave gentleman felt
himself more and more fascinated by his clever nephew, whose fresh,
demonstrative youth seemed a compendium of experiences so strangely
numerous. It appeared to him that Felix must know a great deal; he would
like to learn what he thought about some of those things as regards
which his own conversation had always been formal, but his knowledge
vague. Felix had a confident, gayly trenchant way of judging human
actions which Mr. Wentworth grew little by little to envy; it seemed
like criticism made easy. Forming an opinion--say on a person's
conduct--was, with Mr. Wentworth, a good deal like fumbling in a lock
with a key chosen at hazard. He seemed to himself to go about the world
with a big bunch of these ineffectual instruments at his girdle. His
nephew, on the other hand, with a single turn of the wrist, opened
any door as adroitly as a horse-thief. He felt obliged to keep up the
convention that an uncle is always wiser than a nephew, even if he could
keep it up no otherwise than by listening in serious silence to Felix's
quick, light, constant discourse. But there came a day when he lapsed
from consistency and almost asked his nephew's advice.

"Have you ever entertained the idea of settling in the United States?"
he asked one morning, while Felix brilliantly plied his brush.

"My dear uncle," said Felix, "excuse me if your question makes me smile
a little. To begin with, I have never entertained an idea. Ideas often
entertain me; but I am afraid I have never seriously made a plan. I kno